“We Exist Within a Colossal Sphere” –The Void that Harbors the Milky Way (Weekend Feature) | The Daily Galaxy

Our Milky Way Galaxy exists in void –one of the vast holes of the “Swiss-cheese” structure of the cosmos– with a radius measuring roughly 2 billion light years in diameter –the largest void known to science, shaped like a sphere with a shell of increasing thickness made up of galaxies, stars and other …

A long-lost type of dark matter may resolve the biggest disagreement in physics | Live Science

“We Exist Within a Colossal Sphere” –The Void that Harbors the Milky Way (Weekend Feature) | The Daily Galaxy Our Milky Way Galaxy exists in void –one of the vast holes of the “Swiss-cheese” structure of the cosmos– with a radius measuring roughly 2 billion light years Continue Reading

Double-Peak and Destroy: Accretion in a Tidal Disruption Event Reveals Itself Astrobites reports on the first confident detection of an accretion disk that formed after a supermassive black hole tore apart a hapless star. Source: aasnova.org/2020/04/28/double-peak-and-destroy-accretion-in-a-tidal-disruption-event-reveals-itself

For the first time, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory tracked water loss from an interstellar comet as it approached and rounded the Sun. The object, 2I/Borisov, traveled through the solar system in late 2019.

“Borisov doesn’t fit neatly into any class of solar system comets, but it also doesn’t stand out exceptionally from them,” said Zexi Xing, a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong and Auburn University in Alabama who led the research. “There are known comets that share at least one of its properties.”

For the first time, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory tracked water loss from an interstellar comet as it approached and rounded the Sun. The object, 2I/Borisov, traveled through the solar system in late 2019. “Borisov doesn’t fit neatly into any class of solar system comets, but it also doesn’t stand Continue Reading

New research shows interstellar visitor 21/Borisov is not your average comet

Two new separate studies published in Nature today have revealed that our second interstellar visitor, 21/Borisov, packs in three times as much CO than any other comet found wandering in the inner Solar System – a feature that gives astronomers a clue as to where it formed

New research shows interstellar visitor 21/Borisov is not your average comet Two new separate studies published in Nature today have revealed that our second interstellar visitor, 21/Borisov, packs in three times as much CO than any other comet found wandering in the inner Solar System – a feature that Continue Reading

The Universe may not look the same in all directions after all – Astronomy Now

One of the core assumptions all professional and amateur astronomers learn when first entering the field is that at large scales, the universe appears the same in all directions, that is, it’s isotropic.

A paper accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics suggests that may not be the case.

An international team of researchers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton and other data archives studied the X-ray luminosity of 842 galaxy clusters.

The Universe may not look the same in all directions after all – Astronomy Now One of the core assumptions all professional and amateur astronomers learn when first entering the field is that at large scales, the universe appears the same in all directions, that is, it’s isotropic. A paper Continue Reading

Data from Parker Solar Probe’s Third Orbit Now Available to the Public

NASAâs Parker Solar Probe team released a second collection of science data to the public on April 14, 2020. The release includes science data from all four of Parker Solar Probe’s instrument suites, spanning the missionâs third orbit around the Sun, which began on June 18, 2019 and completed on November 15, 2019.

Data from Parker Solar Probe’s Third Orbit Now Available to the Public NASAâs Parker Solar Probe team released a second collection of science data to the public on April 14, 2020. The release includes science data from all four of Parker Solar Probe’s instrument suites, spanning the missionâs third Continue Reading